Visual Culture Research Articles

Life Satisfaction and Work–Life Balance: The Complexities of Gender Patterning

Conventionally, issues connected to work–life balance have been thought to concern women more than men – not least through the promotion of a strongly gendered discourse about the imperative to become a ‘balanced woman’. In this article, however, we draw on interview data from both men and women (in Australia, occupying broadly middle-class social positions) to show the complexities of gender patterning. Specifically, we demonstrate that the cultural imaginary of a ‘balanced life’ as route to life satisfaction was shared equally by the men and women in our sample. Moreover, men were as likely as women to point to the arrival of children as a key ‘fateful moment’ for re-evaluating their own work–life balance. However, gender disparities were evident in both the nature of change that was effected to achieve ‘balance’ and the associated expectations of partners. The article contributes to the gendered theorisation of work–life balance as a cultural norm in contemporary society.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE IMAGE OF FAMILY IN THE VISUAL CULTURE OF KAZAKHSTAN

This study examines the portrayal of family in Kazakhstan's visual culture, tracing its evolution from traditional to contemporary depictions against a backdrop of socio-political changes. The study establishes why the image of family was marginalized in the Soviet period and has had such an explosive development in contemporary art. The focus of the research is placed on the nuclear family and the interpretation of the theme of family in photography, painting and contemporary art in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The purpose of the study is to investigate the transformation of the portrayal of family in the transitional period of socio-political changes. To achieve this goal, the comparative-historical method is employed to analyze artworks from the funds of the A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts and the works of contemporary Kazakh artists over the past 5 years. Findings indicate a re-engagement with pre-Soviet cultural roots juxtaposed against the backdrop of modernity and globalization. The conclusion posits that these changing representations not only reflect the ongoing connection between past and present in Kazakh society but also contribute to a broader understanding of cultural identity and familial concepts, suggesting a dynamic interplay between adherence to tradition and adaptation to contemporary realities.

Five Algerian postcards: a brief history of ‘Images Populaires’ in Maghribi chromolithography

ABSTRACT This article provides a historical introduction to chromolithographic printing in the Maghrib, paying special attention to the role of print in the spread of vernacular iconographies and figurative forms of Islamic art. I focus on five postcards – all produced in Algeria before 1928 by Éditions Bonestève – whose vibrant illustrations depict a variety of figures, creatures, and narrative scenes. They act as windows onto a huge visual archive of printed matter from the 19th and early 20th centuries that remains understudied in both the literature on colonial visual culture and Islamic art history. Perhaps due to their explicitly religious iconography, what is often overlooked about these chromolithographic images is how they were co-produced by European and North African actors and consumed by diverse markets of Muslims and non-Muslims alike; understanding them as fundamentally hybrid is crucial to appreciating their full mobility, their widespread aesthetic and political influence, and their ability to be read in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. Ultimately this article challenges the dismissive label ‘images populaires’, while also asking whether a new reading of certain images as ‘popular’ and ‘Islamic’ is in fact possible if we look to their historical (re)appropriations within different communities, geographies, and political or artistic movements.

Temporalities of speculation and discounting in the twentieth century

AbstractThis article reviews Paul Crosthwaite’s Speculative Time: American Literature in an Age of Crisis (2024) and Liliana Doganova’s Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology (2024), situating them within recent scholarship on a future-oriented, speculative, and economic subject. It focuses on the relationship between financial speculation and temporalities in the twentieth century, specifically on futures and the politics of value in American literature and the calculating technology of discounting. These books bridge what have been two distinct scholarly approaches to studies of capitalist futures: a theoretical focus on futures as cultural imaginaries or narratives of economic action and a material emphasis on practices for anticipating futures and managing risk. The article concludes with a discussion of power and profit in speculation and discounting, emphasizing inequitable access to speculative futures, and suggests that the multidirectional, nonlinear, recursive mode of financialized temporalities in these books might offer a guide to imagining and creating more just futures for us all.

Take Me to the River: Place and Material in Visual Culture

Take Me to the River: Place and Material in Visual Culture

The Roundabout at the Edge of the World: Subsea Tunnels, the Sea and the Islands

This paper is based on the thesis that there is a ‘sea change’ in the Faroe Islands (Faroes) of the twenty-first century, and that this multi-layered transformation in more than a symbolic understanding is brought about by the sea. Submarine space is being appropriated in futuristic infrastructure projects continentalising the Nordic Atlantic society. The relationship between the world above and the world below the sea is reconfigured, and the new vertical landscape gives us the opportunity to reassess images of island communities and ask the question: what is an island? The resurgence of the aquatic space in the lives of the islanders, soaking their cultural identities, is explored through the landscape of roads and tunnels in the Faroe Islands, with special focus on the subsea roundabout between the islands of Eysturoy and Streymoy. The paper argues that the tunnels not only connect previously separated islands, and centre with periphery, but also represent an avenue to a new water-land symbiosis in society. Life might be dryer than it was in the old days, but water continues to be the main source of cultural imagination, wealth, health, and futurity among island dwellers. Drawing on anthropological island studies, this paper represents an island perspective on what it means to conquer the sea-land frontier and to build a future through underground passageways.

Visual culture and the politics of humanitarian consumption: The case of the Biafran gambit

ABSTRACT Photographs of the Biafran famine (1967–70) present, as subjects, emaciated women and children; artefacts used to substantiate colonial stereotypes about Africa as an impoverished continent. Despite this, Biafran leaders commissioned the reproduction of such visuals to galvanize the western public. Through the Swiss public relations company Markpress, the Biafran elite waged a far-reaching media campaign, publicizing the famine and incurring support for their secessionist war against Nigeria. This strategy evinces Black agency and exemplifies a crucial historical moment in which Africans retooled atrocity imagery for a purportedly emancipatory project. The first part of this article examines Biafran state ideology through a reading of the Ahiara Declaration and Chinua Achebe’s poetry, establishing an anti-imperialist orientation to the secessionist movement. The second part analyses more closely the humanitarian response to Biafran images, arguing that Biafran leaders exploited western sentiments as a wartime strategy in a bid for their budding nation’s survival.

Implementing visual literacy techniques among future educators in pre-school and primary school settings

This research aims to evaluate the impact of a visual competence intervention on early childhood and primary school teachers (N = 224) assessing its educational and social significance. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the study involved a questionnaire on socio-demographic information and visual habits, alongside an analysis of 31 open-ended questions. Additionally, photographs taken by undergraduate students in primary and pre-school education post-training, were examined for evidence of significant learning. The findings revealed an enhanced awareness among participants regarding photographic content and messaging. The study highlights the critical need for improved visual culture education among future teachers to better serve a society increasingly oriented towards audiovisual communication.

Ikonomanie, apriorische Bedingungsformen, Psychotechnik

Abstract In his 1956 essay “Die Welt als Phantom und Matrize”, Günther Anders provided a thorough interpretation of radio and television. Far from just being a time-specific document of early electronic mass media, it still continues to provide insights into how human experience is changed through each new technical medium. This will be illustrated via three critical concepts proposed by Anders. He coined the term “iconomania” to conceptualise the ongoing medial shift from a writing-based to a primarily visual culture. “A priori conditional forms” is Anders’ way of getting a grasp on the structural influence of mass production and mass media on human perception and behaviour. The term “psychotechnics” was originally introduced by Anders’ father, William Stern, for early forms of applied psychology. Anders adopted it in a critical fashion in his warnings of an all-encompassing power of reshaping psychical functions that proves especially fruitful when applied to contemporary design principles. Finally, Anders’ media theory will be briefly compared to Shane Denson’s recent work on “discorrelation” between human perception and digital images.

‘It All Started with New Carpet’: The Visual Culture of Domesticity Under Threat in Liverpool’s Welsh Streets

‘It All Started with New Carpet’: The Visual Culture of Domesticity Under Threat in Liverpool’s Welsh Streets

‘Wants more capital than labour’: visiting the Harmony Hall site from 1839–2022

SUMMARY: Visiting, or observing a site in its surrounding environment, is a key point of archaeological and heritage assessment and research. This paper examines historic and contemporary site visits to Robert Owen’s 1830s agricultural community at Harmony Hall. The site was described in letters, in articles, and in visual culture throughout the nineteenth century, after which the site became overgrown. The site itself is telling of some of the reasons behind the community’s early problems, and the reasons behind its ultimate transformation from a community to a school. Today, both the agricultural community and the school are gone. This paper explores the site in the past and today, situating Harmony Hall within its historic and contemporary landscape. Drawing on place-based approaches to heritage sites, experience, and interpretation, this paper outlines the interpretive value in critical ‘visiting’ as a method for assessing sites with a complicated histories like Harmony Hall.

Historicising the Monstrous: Georges Bataille’s ‘Les écarts de la nature’ (1930), Pronatalism and French Eugenics in the Interwar Period

Abstract In 1930, six teratological illustrations of children, victims of infant mortality or stillborn, appeared in the avant-garde magazine Documents. Nuancing the deconstructionist reception of the journal, this essay historicises Documents’ ‘monstrous’ children, returning them to the visual culture of interwar France to reinterpret their criticality. Once resituated within such an image economy, the avant-garde strategy that emerges hinges not on an ability to displace signification but on the legibility of an anxiety-laden motif, radically repurposed. Indeed, permeated by fears of impending depopulation, the image of the infant occupied charged territory in Third Republican France. Consequently, French eugenicists too anchored their rhetoric in this anguished terrain. When Documents intervened in France’s longstanding obsession with the child, its ideological currency was agitated. The political programme that it upheld was subverted. As Georges Bataille joyously announced alongside the teratological illustrations, all eugenics proved was that each ‘individual’, unable to meet its ultra-utopian ideals, is ‘a monster’.

Transition of indigenous culture: Reading Mann Gurung’s “Lost in Transition # 6”

The paper explores and analyzes the multiple realities underneath the remittance culture in the post-1990 Nepal in Mann Gurung’s painting “Lost in Transition # 6.” Several facets of ambivalence and pain; separation and insecurity; dilemma and loneliness; and dependency and cultural decline are comprehensively portrayed in the paintings exhibited under the title Lost in Transition (2019). Moreover, it highlights the tension between tradition and modernity. When the people of rural Nepali villages are exposed to the global labor market in 1990s, there started an influx of capital. Most of the villagers, who used to produce numerous cash crops and cereals themselves, started buying food and vegetable while totally depending upon market imports along with the flow of remittance. The chosen painting exposes the pervasive remittance culture through the image of a Gurung woman whose traditional attire has been haloed by the bright logos of remittance companies. The indigenous-ethnic community in Khorla village of Gorkha district remains torn between tradition and modernity not necessarily because of their choice but an immensely increasing globalization of the market products. To critically analyze the widespread influence of the global corporate world upon the indigenous people in developing countries like Nepal, I have employed Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen’s ideas and strategies of visual semiotics and the concept of Nicholas Mirzoeff related to the visual rhetoric and visual culture.

Interaction Between Gender and Space: A Study on the Genealogy of Feminist Architecture

The exploration and advancement of feminism are vital for addressing critical issues such as social progress, equitable education, and healthcare access. This paper comprehensively examines the feminist movement’s impact on architecture over the past century, identifying key trends and significant areas to establish an academic foundation for feminist architecture. A literature review on feminism in urban planning, architecture, landscape design, and urban safety highlights the current research focus on feminist architectural development. Furthermore, this paper traces the evolution of feminist architecture through both purpose-driven and process-oriented approaches, exploring the interplay between feminist and modern architectural practices. It specifically examines the development of feminist architecture within the Chinese context from two perspectives: the influence of feminist thought on architecture and the evolution of gendered spaces within the “Residence and Courtyard” model. By comparing the internal logic of feminist architectural development in China and the West, this study investigates how geopolitical culture and regional differences shape the future trajectory of this field. Unlike traditional feminist architectural research, which often emphasizes women’s practices within specific feminist ideologies or focuses on visual culture and psychological interpretations of gendered spaces, this paper redefines the scope of feminist architectural studies through a comparative analysis of historical and contemporary contexts, and Eastern and Western perspectives, employing a systematic genealogical approach.

Unveiling the Other: Animals, Oppression, and Visual Culture through Nanook of the North

This article critically examines early 20th-century exploration cinema, focusing onthe portrayal of nonhuman animals and indigenous peoples, using Nanook of theNorth (1922) as a representative example. The study highlights how these films,emerging during a period of intense Western exploration, established enduringvisual conventions that depicted nonhuman animals and indigenous humans ascultural Others. By moving beyond the aesthetic achievements of these films,such as Robert Flaherty's innovative use of long shots, the article brings attentionto the ethical concerns related to speciesism and anthropocentrism that haveoften been overlooked. It explores how the exploitation of nonhuman animalsboth on-screen and behind the scenes reflects broader speciesist powerdynamics, while also challenging the dichotomy between culture and nature asseen in indigenous hunting and gathering societies. The article argues for a reexaminationof these films through a multicultural and intersectional lens,bridging the gap between cinema studies and critical animal and media studies,and ultimately seeks to raise public awareness about the protection of animalrights by emphasizing the sentience and moral consideration due to nonhumananimals.

Visual Representations of Dance and Gender in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient World

This essay outlines the visual reception of dance in the Hebrew Bible and the broader ancient world. It begins with depictions of dance within the visual culture of the ancient Near East, as well as Greek, Roman and Egyptian visual art. It next explores texts from the Hebrew Bible which depict dance and outlines various ways in which these have been brought to life visually through the centuries. The representation of gender in these visual depictions is drawn out and explored throughout the essay.

Interpretation of Western Images from a Postcolonial Perspective: A Case Study of Antonioni's Documentary Chung Kuo - Cina

This paper employs textual analysis and postcolonial theory to explore Michelangelo Antonioni's 1972 documentary Chung Kuo - Cina. The study delves into the film's portrayal of Chinese culture, people, and environment, focusing on how these depictions either reinforce or challenge Western audiences' expectations and prejudices. Antonioni's documentary is analyzed for its use of symbolism, cinematographic techniques, and scene selection in constructing an "exotic" image of China. Through a postcolonial lens, the paper examines how the documentary demonstrates Orientalist perspectives, reflecting Western stereotypes and biases towards China. Furthermore, it explores the broader implications of these representations in the context of cultural exchange and power dynamics. The analysis also considers the historical and political backdrop of the film's production, including the Cultural Revolution and China's efforts to shape its international image. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how visual media shape and disseminate national images in cross-cultural contexts, highlighting the complexities of postcolonial identity construction and the enduring impact of Orientalism in contemporary visual culture.

“Cute saves the world!”: animal Internet Celebrities’ cute activism in the #adoptdon’tshop animal rescue campaign on social media

ABSTRACT This paper examines everyday media practices and seamless work in animal advocacy by various actors with different levels of internet celebrity status, who curate their media personas around ‘cute’ animal images, including established pet Influencers and animal internet celebrities. Through a case study of the most prominent (hashtag) campaign and movement against the pet trade industry and culture in South Korea, #AdoptDon’tShop [#사지말고입양하세요, sajimalgo-ipyanghaseyo], I explore animal internet celebrities’ media practices and immaterial labor that are understated but rigorously performed out of compassion and care for animals. Taking up scholarship on cuteness and Influencer culture, I introduce the concept of cute activism, a novel iteration of social movements adapted into visual social media cultures, pivoting on the performative potential of cuteness and its inherent competency in navigating increasingly-visualized, attention-seeking social media environments. While the instinctive affective appeal of cuteness serves as a driving force and primary modality of cute activism, effectively attracting more people to be tuned into messages, events, and ultimately movements, the very appeal may come into being as a burden for activists, inducing them into continuous immaterial labor.

A Translator's Face: Persianate Selfhood and Portraiture, 1760–1800

AbstractWithin the framework of Persianate self‐hood, this article explores the intersection between translation, Indian dress, and portraiture in India and Britain, 1760–1800. It examines the translator's lived experience and cultural output as a published scholar and Persian secretary in the East India Company. First, it considers the self‐constructed through clothing; second, it examines how the role of the EIC translator is discretely performed. The third is the role of art and the artist in visualizing a record of professional life and its relationship with material culture, and finally, how it evoked a multifarious kinship on a network of ideas unrelated to ethnicity or place. Engaging with the concept of transculturalism, it considers the global ‘family’ as a flexible and dynamic unit that empowers the movement of visual and material culture within generations. The investigation of dress and grooming reframes the imperial ‘self’, seeing dress as the primary navigator of cultural space.

Black Girls Seeing Urban Schools: Visual, Affective, and Discursive (Re)Conceptualizations of Safety

Joining the chorus of Black/Critical Race Feminist scholarship in education, this article explores how both affect and visuality inform understandings of safety for Black girls in schools. Using participatory visual ethnography, I explore how five young Black women at a Philadelphia magnet school conceptualize safety as an affective achievement of visionary school design. I argue that any attempt to address safety for Black girls in urban schools must include attention to the visual school culture and the affective dimensions of the school environment to fully account for the ways these dimensions counter or enable further physical, emotional, or spiritual harm.